It’s a bright, sunny autumn morning in Beechworth. I'm sitting outside Provenance Restaurant waiting for the owner, Michael Ryan, to arrive. He’s picking me up to take me on a tour of Beechworth Bitters Company, his liqueur & cocktail bitters operation. Very excitingly, I’m getting to ride in what I would call his bitters-mobile, an imported Japanese Kei Truck.

Michael arrives, greets me and ducks off into the restaurant to grab some supplies. A hefty bundle of lemongrass and a tub of ginger are hastily stowed in the truck. We head off on our way to the distillery. On the short 10 minute drive, multiple locals warmly wave as they recognise the truck coming past.

Once we arrive, Michael opens the wooden double doors to reveal his workspace. The building is tucked into the hillside to protect its contents from sunlight and temperature. To one side, a wall is lined with wire shelves,brimming with an array of bottles, demijohns and jars filled with individual tinctures of botanicals. A veritable liquid library of ingredients.

With lemongrass and ginger in hand, Michael gets to work preparing for extraction. While he works, he runs me through the process and answers my questions about production, ingredients and purpose. Below is our conversation edited for clarity and length.

Only Bitters: What initially drew you to the world of Bitters & Amari?

Michael Ryan: Oh, the first long lockdown. No, the second, I was a bit bored. I’d always wanted to make cocktail bitters and suddenly had the time to. Bitters are just a simple version of amaro really. So I set out making a library of botanicals.

Only Bitters: When you’re building a new recipe, do you tend to start with an ingredient and build out from there? Or with a specific end goal already in mind before selecting the ingredients?

For the Yuzucello, I thought I needed something that wasn’t an amaro and to showcase the amazing yuzu from Ovens Valley (Mountain Yuzu). I knew I wanted to do a citrus amaro, a red aperitif, a fernet and a richer style. The B8 kind of came out of nowhere. I had always wanted to do a herbal liqueur, partly because the name for it, In The Weeds, came first. 

Only Bitters: It’s a pretty complex liqueur. How many ingredients have you got going into In The Weeds?

Micheal Ryan:  Fifty in that one. It’s the most complex, but actually one of the easier ones to make. It’s all maceration at higher alcohol and all fresh.  It’s just getting enough botanicals to do it that’s hard. I use it a lot in the bar actually, it’s very handy.

Only Bitters: Maceration can be a slow game. How do you decide when the botanic has infused the right amount of flavour into the spirit?

Michel Ryan: It really depends on the botanicals, so fresh herbs I’ll do 6 hours maximum, woody herbs like rosemary I’ll let go for a few days. Citrus I used to do citrus for two weeks but now I just leave them in, I don’t find that it pulls out undesirable flavours. Often for herbs, I’ll do a water maceration after the initial one in spirit and then use that to dilute down the first maceration. 

At this point Michael has finished processing the ginger and lemongrass, blending them down and adding neutral spirit to start the extraction process. He begins to show me through some of the botanicals in the liquid library. There's whole cumquats sitting in large jars, rows upon rows of herbal tinctures, like rivermint, yellowdock, fresh wormwood,nettles and burdock. There are juices of carrot, tomato and bergamot that have been fortified for use in amaro (I wish you could all smell the Bergamot, it's incredible). Yuzu leaf jumps out as a flavour I’m not immediately familiar with. 

Only Bitters: Can you tell me about the Yuzu leaf? I know what to expect from Yuzu fruit, but I’ve never tried the leaves.

Michael Ryan:  I’d certainly thought about using it before, but it’s like I’ve got enough, I’ve got 175 ingredients so I don't need anymore. But then I did the Yuzu Leaf and actually, it’s pretty good. It’s fantastic. It tastes like Yuzu, but it’s got that extra layer of herbaceous flavour. I’m using it in the new Vin Amaro that I’m doing.

Only Bitters: I had the pleasure of trying some of the new Vin Amaro last night and it was delicious. How did it come about?

Michael Ryan: They were doing a Beechworth Chardonnay dinner, it was all chardonnay and I thought “I want to go to that dinner”. They said they needed something to break up the Chardonnay.

Only Bitters: Which is a funny thing to say for a planned chardonnay dinner.

Michael Ryan: Yeah, Chardonnay at every course but then what do you do for dessert? They gave me the Chardonnay and I played around with it. It was delicious, but hadn’t fermented dry, just too much residual sugar for a wine.

Only Bitters: So what flavours are going into the Vin Amaro?

Michael Ryan: So there’s green tea from the kiewa valley, yuzu leaf and yuzu rind. I just wanted to use lots of local ingredients. That's when I started using hops too.

Only Bitters:  Is there an ingredient that you've worked with that had a surprising end result?

Michael Ryan: Meadowsweet, it's got a really cola note. So many amaro have that cola note to it, how do I achieve that? Cola is just citrus and spices. (he shows me a particular section of tinctures on the shelf) These are all my witchy herbs here, you know sarsaparilla and hyssop, have I got any Meadowsweet? Yep, this is the meadowsweet... And yeah, you get that real cola, smell. It's also good for colour, as I don’t add any caramel colouring. 

Michael has finished up and labeled the ginger and lemon grass tinctures. We grab some stock to take back to Provenance for the upcoming evening. There’s a tasting on offer in the upstairs Parlour Amaro Bar that I'm excited for. Check out the notes from the tasting below.

Read the full Tasting of Beechworth Bitters Amaro & Liqueur